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“Sadie, what are you so worried about?” I cupped the back of her head, tucking my fingers into her hair so that she looked at me. “What exactly do you think is going to happen when we walk inside?”
“What if they figure it out, Connor? I need this to go well for me and you know that.” Sadie’s voice was small and scared, quiet where usually she sounded so very loud and bright. I felt so stupid at that moment for being so obtuse. How had I forgotten that she needed the money, and that was the whole reason why she had signed up to join the show in the first place? This hadn’t been some game to her, it was real.
“Sadie listen—” I began haltingly, unsure of how to say what I wanted to say without insulting her. I didn’t want what I was offering to sound like charity, or as if I were simply blowing off her fear in favor of my own self-confidence and security. “We’re just going to walk into the studio tomorrow like we normally would, like friends, even. No one said we couldn't be friends, right? So, there’s no problem and no one can say anything. They encouraged us to get close. And about the money, I can—”
“Connor, no,” Sadie snapped back at me in answer and then sat up so quickly that I missed her warmth almost immediately. She stared over her shoulder at me in contempt and it reminded of the first time we met, and she instantly didn’t like me, what seemed like ages ago in the street.
I cursed myself as our cozy atmosphere was immediately overturned by what I had said. That seemed to be my luck with things, though. It seemed that I never knew the perfect thing to say.
Sadie’s fingers dug into the couch cushions underneath her, hands white with the stress. “Don’t say it, okay? Just don’t say it. I don’t need to hear it.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say, so how can you tell me not to say it?” I asked her innocently, tipping my head back against the couch and listening distantly to the TV show that was still playing in front of us. I wondered if there was any way that I could save this and yet still give her the money she needed.
Sadie let out a little laugh, short and humorless. I was dreading whatever she was going to say. She turned to me on the couch, folding her pale legs underneath herself and sitting still with pent-up annoyance. Sadie sat there staring at me as if I had proposed something horrible when in reality I hadn’t yet said anything at all. She all but crossed her arms like a child in a corner, with her mouth pinched and her eyes squinted at me. “You’re going to say that you can just give me the money, and everything will be fine, right? That I don’t have to worry about it, that I’ll never have to worry about it because I’m with the son of a billionaire now?”
“I wasn’t going to phrase it in that way, no,” I told her with a small shrug of my shoulders, staring up at the ceiling.
I was regretting the entire conversation. I had been about to say something similar, yeah, though being the son of a billionaire had nothing to do with wanting to take care of her. I had never wanted to take care of anyone in that way, not really. I just wanted her to know that I would be here if she needed me. She didn’t need to worry about things that shouldn’t have even mattered in the first place, and I was going to be sure that she never had to again. Sadie wasn’t the type to accept charity or handouts, though. Sadie wasn’t someone who wanted to owe anyone else. Not that she would owe me anything, but the point still stood.
“It doesn’t matter how you phrase it, Connor, you just don’t get it,” Sadie shot back, and her hazel eyes blazed green. “I don’t want or even need your money, okay? I just want you and that’s it.”
I cleared my throat, trying desperately to push down that feeling of ridiculously warm happiness that threatened to break the surface of my cool, calm, and collected exterior. I wasn’t sure if there had been anyone in my life who just wanted me. Other than maybe Jack, it seemed that nearly every person I had met through the years and grown attached to in some way had really only wanted me for what I could give them or what my father could do for them. Sadie just wanted me and I knew that it was a good thing that I didn’t want to let go of.
